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<td><b><dl><dt>Berkeley DB Reference Guide:<dd>Access Methods</dl></b></td>
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<p align=center><b>Selecting a byte order</b></p>
<p>Database files created by Berkeley DB can be created in either little- or
big-endian formats.  The byte order used for the underlying database
is specified by calling the <a href="../../api_c/db_set_lorder.html">DB-&gt;set_lorder</a> method.  If no order
is selected, the native format of the machine on which the database is
created will be used.</p>
<p>Berkeley DB databases are architecture independent, and any format database can
be used on a machine with a different native format.  In this case, as
each page that is read into or written from the cache must be converted
to or from the host format, and databases with non-native formats will
incur a performance penalty for the run-time conversion.</p>
<p><b>It is important to note that the Berkeley DB access methods do no data
conversion for application specified data.  Key/data pairs written on a
little-endian format architecture will be returned to the application
exactly as they were written when retrieved on a big-endian format
architecture.</b></p>
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